NEWS FEATURE: Arabs, Israelis Search For Coexistence Amid the Violence

c. 2000 Religion News Service HAIFA, Israel _ A fanciful sculpture of “The Little Prince” dances on the rooftop of a home in this mixed Jewish-Arab city neighborhood. Nearby, a colorful wall mural by a team of Jewish and Arab artists features the portraits of Aladdin and Winnie the Pooh, the universally loved heroes of […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

HAIFA, Israel _ A fanciful sculpture of “The Little Prince” dances on the rooftop of a home in this mixed Jewish-Arab city neighborhood. Nearby, a colorful wall mural by a team of Jewish and Arab artists features the portraits of Aladdin and Winnie the Pooh, the universally loved heroes of children’s literature.

The street art is part of a unique Arab-Jewish “Coexistence Walk” dedicated to the theme of children and developed for the upcoming religious holidays of Ramadan, Hannukah and Christmas. In the coming weeks, thousands of Christian, Muslim and Jewish school groups are expected to tread this path, and think a little more about how they can live together peacefully.


While the violent clashes in the West Bank and Gaza have squelched virtually all dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, Arab and Jewish citizens within Israel’s pre-1967 borders are making a renewed effort to reach out to one another.

Their efforts are an enduring testimony to the spirit of understanding in an otherwise troubled time. They are the bright spots of hope in the generally gloomy atmosphere of regional anger and frustration.

Over a dozen Israeli Arab citizens have been killed in the street demonstrations that began in late September and early October coinciding with with the onset of Palestinian-Israeli clashes in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

But while the violence in the Israeli-occupied territories has continued, the unrest within Israel quickly died down. Not only that, but in the wake of the disturbances, Israel’s government has promised to allocate millions of dollars to improve neglected Israeli Arab municipal and educational services. And a commission of inquiry is to be created to investigate allegations that police fired indiscriminately into the street demonstrations.

The official moves constitute a kind of grudging recognition that Israel’s Arab citizens, who constitute about 18 percent of the population, have legitimate gripes about their longstanding treatment as second-class citizens.

At the grass roots, meanwhile, Arab and Jewish organizations working to promote coexistence have actually reported a dramatic upswing of interest in their activities in response to the shock of September’s violence.

The flurry of activity has ranged from colorful “peace tents” pitched at major road intersections in northern Israel, to interreligious meetings of Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious figures, joint conferences, tours and prayer services.


“This is the worst crisis we have faced between the two communities in Israel since the inception of the Israeli state in 1948,” said Sarah Lazar, director of the Givat Haviva Jewish-Arab Center for Peace, a kibbutz-sponsored foundation active since 1963.

“We’ve been through wars and peace agreements. But this is the worst because of the sense of frustration and betrayal that was experienced on both sides, the gap in perceptions about what happened. It was unbelievable how people who read the same newspapers and watch the same television could interpret the same events so differently.”

The placid tree-studded Givat Haviva campus where Lazar works is situated in one of the most politically unsettled regions of Israel _ the Wadi Ara corridor just above the northern tip of the West Bank.

This predominantly Arab Muslim area is a center for Islamic activism, and in September it was the staging ground for some of the most violent confrontations between Israeli Arab demonstrators and police, confrontations which blocked major road arteries and left people like Lazar virtually homebound for days.

“In the first two weeks after the riots, I was paralyzed,” recalled this Jewish peace educator, who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. “The media was all over us with microphones, and in a moment of crisis I even told one reporter that I felt like our work was a complete failure.

“Our Arab colleagues blamed us for not being there at the barricades when the protests were taking place. They said that the presence of 10 or 20 Jews would have stopped the police from shooting and killing so precipitously. We told them, `Did you really expect us to join you when Jews were also being stopped on the roads, and their cars burned?’ This was the discourse of the first two weeks. Blaming.”


Slowly, however, something changed, Lazar recalls.

Over the past three weeks, the Givat Haviva institute has been deluged by calls from people all over Israel _ Jews and Arabs, school principals and women’s clubs, obscure organizations that Lazar had never heard of. People want to reach out, talk, and get involved, she said.

“There was a kind of inner power, and an outer power, that propelled us forward,” Lazar said. “Just as people go to a psychologist, people turned to us for help in organizing seminars, encounters, dialogue.”

Haifa’s Wadi Nisnis neighborhood, where the Coexistence Walk is located, was largely spared the violence of the Wadi Ara demonstrations. That, says Hani Elfar of the nearby Beit Ha Gefen Arab Jewish community center, is largely thanks to the good relations between Arabs and Jews as a result of the decades of dialogue.

Over the coming weeks, Elfar and his colleagues plan to escort every school principal and teacher in this Mediterranean port city of 270,000 people on the Coexistence Walk. Jewish educators, jittery about traipsing through Arab neighborhoods in times of tension, will be able to wander through this peaceful and picturesque neighborhood of aging stone homes graced with grapevines, and soak up the atmosphere.

If Elfar has his way, the Coexistence Walk will thus be flooded over the coming months with groups of Jewish and Arab students, partaking in the street gallery experience of whimsical sculptures and murals, of wood, plastic and metal.

“Haifa is a unique place, and despite all of the events we are continuing together to build confidence between Jews and Arabs,” said Elfar.


DEA END FLETCHER

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